Davis: Moving on from the Lemurs’ exit

Updated 8:27 am, Wednesday, May 10, 2017

The Lemurs have shut down operations after five seasons in Laredo which saw the team go to the playoffs three times and win an American Association championship in 2015.

The Lemurs have shut down operations after five seasons in Laredo which saw the team go to the playoffs three times and win an American Association championship in 2015.

Photo: Jason Mack / Laredo Morning Times File

Davis: Moving on from the Lemurs’ exit

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After five very successful seasons on the field, the Laredo Lemurs are no more. While the players were set to report to Laredo last week, instead they found out they were without jobs while citizens were left without a team.

It’s a disastrous result that has many scratching their heads, and it’s only spiraled out of control in the aftermath of owner Arianna Torres’ announcement that the team itself has been "forever lost."

After the team shut down officially, there has been finger pointing from all sides. But here’s the thing: Does it really matter whose fault it is now? The team is gone. This is an absolute certainty. All the finger pointing in the world isn’t going to make local fans feel any better about that fact. The bottom line is the team is no more and Laredo once again is without another major athletic team representing it.

Laredo’s previously plummeting attendance

While the franchise departed on its own accord, let’s all stop pretending that everything was going perfect with the Lemurs before this dysfunction came out between the owner, the rest of the organization and the city. Attendance has been tumbling every season since their inaugural year in 2012. That season’s 3,834 average dropped by more than 800 fans in just one year. By 2015 in Torres’ first year, the average crowd was 1,302. Last year was a new franchise low averaging just 893.

Why is that? There were some bad fan experiences I’m sure — and we’ll get back to that in a bit — but overall, this team was as good as any other in the American Association during its existence. And even in hard times financially, it’s hard to beat tickets as low as $5 with kids under 13 getting in free.

The Lemurs made the postseason field in three of their five years. Considering the playoffs only invite four teams and three come from automatic bids towards winning your division, this wasn’t an easy feat. In the two seasons they didn’t make the playoffs, Laredo narrowly missed the cut. In 2016, the Lemurs became the first team ever to win at least 57 games to not qualify, finishing a half-game back of eventual champion Winnipeg for the wild-card spot. In 2013, Laredo finished 1 ½ games behind Grand Prairie for the South division bid.

The Lemurs have had plenty of top talent on their roster historically. With respected manager Pete Incaviglia bringing in quality players, Laredo finished 2016 with eight of its members being signed by affiliated teams — one shy of the AA’s all-time record. Former reliever Chaz Roe also has seen MLB action with four different lineups from 2013-17 after playing with the roster in 2012. And plenty of that talent was set to return in 2017 including closer Jeff Inman, infielder Abel Nieves, right fielder Denis Phipps and third baseman Juan Silverio.

When a team enters a market, a community has the opportunity to support it or not. Laredo, with a population of more than 250,000, has routinely struggled to do this with its organizations. In just the previous five years alone, the Lemurs join a list of departing teams that is constantly growing.

The Laredo Heat operated in professional soccer for 11 years before halting operations in 2015. The Laredo Rattlesnakes played arena football for two seasons. The South Texas Revolution and Toros de los dos Laredos each lasted one season in professional basketball. Even the Laredo Diesel/Honey Badgers never played a single indoor soccer game before being nixed. At a smaller scale, the Laredo Wolverines — an amateur football team that allowed many locals to play after high school — will not operate in 2017 after beginning in 2014.

In the end, all the city is left with is the Laredo Swarm of the American Basketball Association, and they had attendance problems of their own last year. The Laredo Phantasy and Laredo Lady Warhawks out of the ICON Women’s Football Association are also still around but neither are even close to the attendance figures the Lemurs received.

Laredo needs to understand that as this list grows, the idea of bigger and better teams moving to the area becomes slimmer. Despite the fantastic facilities already built in Laredo Energy Arena and Uni-Trade Stadium, franchises aren’t going to move to an area where a community chooses not to go to its own games.

How many times have you heard Laredoans beg for a return from the Laredo Bucks hockey team which last played in 2011? Do you honestly believe the city would bring back a sport which requires ticket prices of at least $30-40 just to pay for costs when citizens won’t even go to Swarm games when they advertise free admission? It’s not going to happen.

Organizational mistakes turning off fans

While there is some blame to go around with Laredoans needing to better support their athletic teams, there is still plenty of fault with the Lemurs. Having personally seen the Lemurs in action every year since the team existed, there have been a lot of issues season after season with this franchise that have irked fans.

The most glaring example obviously was the team’s loss of a beer license in 2015. After the organization let go of its alcohol vendor with a few weeks left in the regular season, the facility had no other liquor license. The Lemurs tried to counter down the stretch inviting fans to bring their own beer to games — a positive step forward — but then they shot themselves in the foot by trying to charge fans for bringing in coolers. It not only became a negative blemish on the franchise but some fans wanted no part of the team after that. The first two playoff games that year featured an average of only 543 fans — easily the two lowest attended games that year — and soured a season which ended in the team’s first AA championship.

But there have been plenty of additional problems beyond beer licenses. When former owner Mark Schuster left after the 2014 season, he angered plenty of people in the area. It was Torres’ job to renew faith in the team, but after she took over, it just seemed like it was business as usual inside the ballpark. The franchise never had the overhaul it desperately needed to bring in fans that were already dwindling, and instead the people in place just kept doing their jobs as they did previously.

For example, the fans’ in-game experience has never really changed in five seasons. Focus has always been on getting people in the stadium then having them watch the game. But this isn’t a movie theater. Baseball is slow and the focus must always be on how to continuously entertain fans, especially those who are young.

Instead, the team used a handful of the same sound effects over and over and played the same graphics and videos on the scoreboard multiple times per outing. When going to numerous games, this can really wear on you as it seems like you’re seeing the same show again and again.

Then there was the between-inning entertainment. Did the Lemurs really think fans wanted to see people play musical chairs on a daily basis for years at a time? I can’t tell you how sick I am of the Whataburger Fry Toss or kids running into each other using sumo outfits. There’s nothing wrong with these activities, just don’t do them every single game.

Even the script used by the PA announcer as recently as last season had elements in it that read exactly as they did in the first few seasons. There has to be variety in an event, otherwise we’re just seeing the same thing on repeat. The seventh-inning stretch also had its own issues as it featured a version of "Take Me Out to the Ballgame" that had the lyrics, "Root, root, root for the Cubbies" near the end of the song. How can a baseball organization actively invite its fans to root for a non-local MLB team for years without either having the announcer sing "Lemurs" over the other team name or finding a song that just says "home team?"

Looking at the future of baseball in Laredo

Now with all this season’s organizational dysfunction, I still believe there’s hope for another baseball team in Laredo after the Lemurs.

Uni-Trade Stadium is going to be an extremely attractive facility for any baseball league with an open spot, as is the potential large population of Laredo that could get behind the franchise. But it’s hard to imagine getting a better product than the AA provided — the equivalent of affiliated baseball’s Double-A level — after this year’s events and recent attendance figures. And any other league will look long and hard at any possible involvement from the city that could have led to the Lemurs’ demise.

If Laredo does eventually land another team, there are a few steps the new owners must take if they want to be a success in this market.

— Choose a name that connects locally

It’s fairly clear the name Lemurs was never accepted by the city. It’s been widely panned over the years for having nothing to do with the area. Although a connection was made as fossilized bones were historically found in Lake Casa Blanca from millions of years ago that were similar to lemurs, the main reason it was chosen was its potential appeal to children. With the movie Madagascar popular at the time and featuring a lemur, it was seen as an attractive option for a mascot.

But the idea of choosing Lemurs over the widely loved Tecolotes name that held a special place in the heart of locals was always a sore spot. In fact, over the past few seasons, the Lemurs played the Tecolotes in the preseason despite the fact their opponents hadn’t existed in years. Even with a cobbled together lineup, fans packed the stadium and cheered overwhelmingly for the Tecos over their hometown Lemurs.

In a perfect world, any new team would come to the area and take over as the Laredo Tecolotes. But no matter what new name they would choose, they must strategically pick one that locals can embrace and rally behind.

— Create an atmosphere specific to Laredo’s culture

The Lemurs have often said over the years that this was the city of Laredo’s team, but they’ve never been able to fully reflect that in the ballpark. Uni-Trade Stadium has never felt like it had a consistent theme, let alone one connected to the city.

A new franchise needs to come in and fully embrace the Mexican culture. It should be a completely different experience than any other ballpark in the league. Go all out. Don’t just mix in some Mexican food on the menu, celebrate the local area and show opposing teams what Laredo is all about.

— Use the mascot to bring constant entertainment

One of the biggest ways to excite the crowd is the mascot, which needs to be inventive and almost a show in itself. It’s hard to classify Pancho the Lemur as that. More or less, Laredo’s mascot was used to simply greet fans instead of providing any type of unique comedic shenanigans. Then there’s FrankenLemur, which never made any sense to begin with. It didn’t debut during Halloween, it was an inflatable mascot that was more difficult to interact with and in certain years it took the place of Pancho altogether as the only visible mascot in the stadium.

When the San Diego Chicken or mascots from Mexican League teams were inside Uni-Trade Stadium, fans loved every second of their interactions. Each were constantly coming up with new and inventive ways to pull the public’s attention, even outshining the game itself at times. That’s the type of atmosphere that needs to be cultivated for a new organization.

— Perform on Opening Day at the highest level

In the beginning of most years, the Lemurs have gone through many different staff members. This included all areas around the ballpark including game day operations, tickets, concessions and ushers. But Opening Day would always be the roughest performance for these employees as they were still learning what to do.

The problem is that Opening Day is the most important game of the season for baseball teams. Attendance is always high and it sets the tone for what to expect entertainment-wise for the rest of the season. A strong performance can win fans over for the rest of the year, but a generic game with nothing special occurring and problems from untrained employees can have a negative impact on them returning.

— No problem should be too small

Any new organization must avoid any issue no matter the size. I’ve heard complaints for years about the Lemurs that were turnoffs for fans, and organizations like this can’t afford to lose any customers.

The Lemurs’ franchise held $1 beer nights but it wasn’t always that simple. Some $1 beer nights would end in the middle innings of the game. Other nights the team would have a surprise $1 beer promotion for an inning, but by the time fans got through the line, the inning would be over and they wouldn’t get their cheap beer. On that note, others have said they wouldn’t go back because the beer lines were so long they spent multiple innings waiting in line for a small cup. Obviously these are serious turnoffs and aggravations for a promotion that should be celebrated as a crowd favorite.

Other issues I’ve witnessed over the years involve staff members yelling at their subordinates in front of customers, songs played over the speaker featuring curse words, frequent menu changes and price fluctuation and the team’s website and staff emails being shut down from not being paid. I’ve even known of season ticket holders who specifically didn’t sign up for the following year because the team said they would call them back to set it up and never did, so out of spite they chose to only come to games occasionally.

I can give you another example that impacts me personally. Near the end of last year, a baseball came up near the press box and crashed into the glass. A week or so after, the blow from the baseball had created an extremely large spider web pattern of cracks. But as of last weekend during the high school playoffs, that window has still not been fixed. Now selfishly this concerns me a bit because I don’t want a baseball to hit that window and shower me in glass shards. But I’m also concerned about a ball cracking that glass and raining down on the fans below. And before you say, "Well there are no Lemurs games anymore so it’s not a problem," remember there are still high school games being played there even this week where the same danger is present.

The point is that there is truly no problem too small. The little things matter. A mistake in food or an inexperienced staff worker could be all it takes to lose a customer. The attention to detail has to be extremely high in every capacity. And with the Lemurs in off-the-field matters, that hasn’t always been the case.

A final goodbye

In the end, history will decide whether or not the Lemurs’ experiment was a success or failure in Laredo. The product on the field was always top notch, but it’s hard to argue with how drastically the attendance evaporated and the spectacular fashion in which the team imploded just days before practice began in 2017.

It’s a sad time for many in the city that did follow the team. Personally, after coming aboard at Laredo Morning Times in 2012, my second day on the job was covering the Lemurs in the playoffs. I remember at the time being blown away by how nice of a stadium the team had to play in. Now almost five years later, it’s amazing to think that same facility will be empty just two years after the team inside it won a championship.

Follow @ZachDavisLMT on Twitter for the latest news on the Lemurs and other local sports.